


Freefall

by darkbluebox



Series: Avatar: The Foxhole Legends [2]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate POV, Alternate Universe - Avatar & Benders Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avatar Neil Josten, Baltimore, Bonus Content, Flashbacks, Kidnapping, Loss of Control, M/M, POV Andrew Minyard, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Presumed Dead, Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:33:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26195677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkbluebox/pseuds/darkbluebox
Summary: Andrew may be unconscious before he even hits the water, but that doesn’t stop the ocean from following him into his dreams, ink-black and all-consuming. He hasn’t dreamed of drowning since he left the Water Tribe, squirrelled back into the earth kingdom by Nicky’s interfering parents.Andrew POV of Neil's kidnapping inIron and Ember.
Relationships: Kevin Day & Andrew Minyard, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Series: Avatar: The Foxhole Legends [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1902337
Comments: 15
Kudos: 162





	Freefall

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is bonus content for my atla au [Iron and Ember,](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24949477/chapters/60389863) so if you haven't already read it I would recommend starting there!
> 
> Fair warning, I didn't check for continuity errors while writing this, so if you notice something that doesn't fit with the main fic, sssshhhhhhhh.
> 
> Content warnings: injuries, reference to childhood abuse, loss of autonomy, vertigo, drowning, suffocation, scars, death mention.

Andrew may be unconscious before he even hits the water, but that doesn’t stop the ocean from following him into his dreams, ink-black, choking, all-consuming. He hasn’t dreamed of drowning since he left the Water Tribe, squirreled back into the earth kingdom by Nicky’s interfering parents.

Drowning is worse than falling, in some ways. He hates the way the water throttles down his throat and fills up his lungs, reminds him too much of the way Drake would seize the water in Andrew’s blood and bend it to his will. The dizzying disorientation that comes from the loss of the ground beneath him is the same as it always was in the years he spent stumbling through the Northern capital’s ice-coated streets. At least when he was a child, he had no frame of reference; he thought the hollow in his chest was normal because he had never known anything else. Then he took his first steps on solid Earth Kingdom dirt, and the vertigo evaporated. The hollow space remained however, and Andrew had believed it would remain there forever.

And then he met Neil.

When Andrew comes around, he hurts everywhere. The pain on the outside is normal. The pain on the inside is new, a horrific betrayal of his own heart of the kind he had long believed himself to have grown out of. The shock is so bitter and thorough that for a moment Andrew doesn’t notice the figures standing over him, and for a moment the space where Neil should be is too much to bear. Andrew may hold his life in as much regard as he would a swamp-rat’s, but his body powers on regardless, heaving and choking as his lungs try to work around the water still choking them. There’s a horrific, bubbling sensation in his chest, and suddenly the water is being pulled from his lungs and back up his throat, and he’s distantly aware of hands holding him down, holding him still, which is seriously interfering with his plan to jump up and murder whoever is stupid enough to bend the water in his chest, and it’s all too much, too much like _before_ , and suddenly the air hits his lungs like a punch to his sternum, and-

“We’ve got you,” says Renee, her voice distant, all the more infuriating for how shaken she sounds. “It’s okay, Andrew. We’ve got you.”

Dizzy, lost, with pain of every kind clawing at his chest, Andrew is pulled into the black depths of unconsciousness once more.

The next time he wakes up, he’s numb inside and out. He’s used to numbness on the inside – less so, lately, but all the same – but the loss of sensation in his limbs is a nuisance, and it takes a day, two, three, before he can haul himself out of bed unaided. The forks of lightning-shaped scars branch across his chest and arms, warm with the phantom sensations of electric currents flowing through him.

Kevin is the first foolish enough to fight his way past Abby’s guard. Andrew can tell just from looking at him that Kevin has no idea who Neil was, Kevin, the self-proclaimed avatar _expert,_ and the sheer _stupidity_ of it all makes him want to rip the world apart all over again.

Anger – _real_ anger – is new to Andrew. It was rarely a useful or constructive emotion, so he usually discarded it in favour of the cold distance required to survive life’s blows. But Neil, who buried through Andrew’s careful defences and lodged himself in his chest like seawater, blew Andrew’s lifetime of control to pieces, and the long-held temper Andrew lost on Riko’s ship is not one he thinks he’ll ever get back.

He brings the roof down on Kevin’s head with a swipe of a bandage-plastered arm, and Kevin yelps as the slabs of rock crush him. There’s betrayal in his eyes, confusion, so many things Andrew doesn’t have time for.

“You should have let him kill me,” Andrew hisses.

“I didn’t know – we didn’t – he didn’t tell us he would-” Kevin thrashes, trying to free his arms as Andrew crushes them into his sides. “What did Neil _say?_ What happened, Andrew, where are they taking him-?!” Kevin chokes, and not because of the rocks. “We have to do something. _Please,_ Andrew.”

“Say that word again, and I’ll bury you.”

Kevin told him, once, what the Fire Nation did to Avatars. They were too dangerous to keep around a second longer than necessary; Riko would have killed Neil immediately, and will be taking his corpse back to the Fire Lord as they speak.

Neil is gone.

No, not gone. The avatar is never _gone_. Kevin had explained it all, once, and Andrew’s fool memory had carved it in stone despite his indifference to the subject. The Avatar dies, the Avatar is reborn. The cycle spins onwards.

Andrew doesn’t give a shit about the Avatar, the cycle, the universe, balance, harmony, the rest of it. The world could go to hell. He doesn’t want the Avatar, he wants _Neil._ He wants to rip the world apart the same way it ripped _him_ apart. He wants to tear down the Foxhole and the cliffs and the mountains and the valleys, he wants to grind the world to dust beneath his heel, he wants to stop wanting because this loss is more than he knows how to bear.

Andrew relaxes his grip, and Kevin drops to his knees, heaving in a breath of air.

“Neil is dead,” Andrew says. “Get out of my sight.”

Kevin’s expression collapses. He opens his mouth, for a question, an apology, a commiseration, but whatever it is, he thinks better of it.

He leaves, and no one else makes the mistake of bothering Andrew. Day turns to night turns to day, and Andrew lets the hollow in his chest eat its way outwards until it feels as though there’s nothing left of him.

*

Andrew startles awake to the feeling of engines buzzing through the earth. His first thought is _attack_ , his second thought is, _we’re all dead_ , and his third is, _so?_

He pulls himself up and out anyway, because if he’s going to die then he’ll do it on his feet, on his own terms, protecting what remains of his family.

The Foxes are too busy with the airship to pester him for being out of bed. He finds them up on the hill, but they’re not in battle formations, they’re crowding around something, some _one-_

Andrew’s world trembles under his feet, shaking in time with the breath that slips from his lungs. The earth bends and cracks as though fleeing from his path as he stalks forwards, stalks towards-

Neil turns around, Neil smiles, and like stepping foot on dry land after a lifetime at sea, the vertigo evaporates.

Andrew lands.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm very good at saying I'm done with a story and then pulling up like a week later with More Stuff.
> 
> Come say hi [on tumblr](https://darkblueboxs.tumblr.com) and [twitter.](https://twitter.com/darkblueboxs)


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